Vancouver Real Estate Market Analysis - February 2017

December 15, 2017

In continuation of my initial article of the Vancouver Real Estate Market, the B.C. Provincial Government seems to be experiencing a negative affect from the 15% tax on foreign buyers who purchased homes and planned to close the transaction after August 1 2016. They have suggested that they imposed the tax prior to knowing the facts as to what the percentage was for foreign buyers and I believe that they also had no knowledge regarding the impact of the revenue stream for collecting the 15% tax versus the loss in revenue from not collecting the Land Transfer Tax on the sales that are no longer happening in British Columbia. I am waiting for additional data that currently is not available and then I will post the estimated loss or gain in revenue to the Government since August 1 2016. As this type of data is not public information I will have to use the estimates provided by the Government. My contacts who work this market and/or are involved in the Chinese portion of the market indicated that the market picked up immediately for February 2017 however I have no statistical analysis for this until March 8th 2017. Here is an article about the lift of the tax for buyers with work permits, courtesy of the Financial Post; http://business.financialpost.com/personal-finance/mortgages-real-estate/b-c-lifts-foreign-buyers-tax-for-people-with-work-permits